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		<title>Most snakes in this area really aren&apos;t that dangerous. &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2019/06-June/18.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>Most snakes in this area really aren&apos;t that dangerous.</h1>
			<p>Day 01564: <time>Tuesday, 2019 June 18</time></p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/06/18.jpg" alt="A house with the side shingles ripped off" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="snakes">
	<h2>Snakes</h2>
	<p>
		My lack of knowledge on the local snakes was still bothering me.
		What are those snakes I&apos;ve been seeing?
		They don&apos;t have the highly-pronounced, vibrant stripes of the garter snakes, but they still kind of have stripes.
		They don&apos;t quite match the photos I&apos;ve been looking at of gopher snakes either though.
		Some gopher snakes photos are pretty close to what I see, but others are way off.
		They seem to come in a small variety of patterns.
		Whatever they are though, they shouldn&apos;t be dangerous, as they have no rattles, an look nothing like the three non-rattlesnake species of snakes supposedly present on this continent.
	</p>
	<p>
		I found a <a href="https://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/living_with/docs/livingwsnakes.pdf">guide more local to my area, released by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife</a>.
		They seem like they&apos;d know what they&apos;re talking about.
		They say that there are fifteen species of snakes living in this state.
		Four of them are garter snakes.
		Of the fifteen photographs, what I&apos;ve been seeing look most like the pacific coast aquatic garter snake, but that photo isn&apos;t quite like what I see.
		It&apos;s closer than their photo of a gopher snake though.
		The most interesting thing the paper tells us though is that the only one of these snakes that&apos;s dangerous to humans is the western rattlesnake.
		So we&apos;ve got one species of rattlesnake here, and nothing else that poses any sort of threat.
		If you can clearly see that a snake here doesn&apos;t have a rattle, it&apos;s not a deadly snake.
	</p>
	<p>
		That said, that advice doesn&apos;t apply to baby rattlers.
		My understanding is that the rattle of a rattlesnake is actually made from shed skin that didn&apos;t fully detach from the body.
		It just sort of squishes up at the end of the tail, and I guess some of the parts break off inside, which you hear hitting the edges of the rattle when the snake shakes its tail.
		What this means though is that a rattlesnake that hasn&apos;t shed its skin doesn&apos;t have a rattle.
		It might take multiple sheds before the rattle even starts to develop.
		I don&apos;t know for sure.
		But a young rattlesnake has no rattle, even though it still had deadly venom.
		It&apos;s safest to leave snakes alone if you can&apos;t properly identify them.
	</p>
	<p>
		Also, it seems that snakes are normally slow-moving.
		In the city, they tend to dash away when spotted, so I assumed them to normally move pretty quickly.
		It&apos;s not actually strange that these snakes I&apos;ve been seeing as I pass through the forest mostly just lie there.
		The paper briefly mentions that snakes will often lie still in hopes of being overlooked.
		Of course, if I&apos;d overlooked that snake I saw yesterday, it&apos;d&apos;ve gotten crushed under my bicycle tire.
		It was more beneficial to the snake that I <strong>*didn&apos;t*</strong> overlook it.
		I don&apos;t recall whether the forest snake I saw last month was in my trajectory or not, but if I&apos;d overlooked that one, there&apos;s a good chance it&apos;d&apos;ve been crushed too.
		Sometimes getting seen is how you survive an encounter with a human.
		We&apos;re huge, and can do heavy damage without intending to.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed tiny robots were being sent out en mass to spy on people.
		They looked like small chip boards, and didn&apos;t seem to have any means of locomotion, but usually didn&apos;t get caught.
		They got in and out very stealthily, and could only really be seen in you bought one of these bot-trapper kits and set it up in your home.
		In addition to surveillance, these bots also installed vulnerabilities onto some electronics, which could later be exploited by whoever sent out the bots.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		Instead of breakfast, I just sort of snacked on pretzels.
		I had 300 grams of them; too many.
		For lunch, I had 107 grams of corn chips and 275 grams of salsa.
		I wouldn&apos;t have time for a grocery run until after work, so I worked with what I had.
		I should have done something with the carrots and/or potatoes though.
		I need to get those used.
		For dinner, I had 252 grams of muffuletta.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<p>
		It occurred to me while I was out biking today that it doesn&apos;t matter that the nodes in <code>modname_tba</code> don&apos;t have much in common, nor does it matter that the mod doesn&apos;t even have much of a name.
		You know why?
		Because it&apos;s not fit for release.
		It goes through a list of known elements, checking to see which ones are defined, and executes files based on which elements it finds.
		For simplicity, the name of the element and the name of the file are identical.
		There&apos;s a loop that goes through the list of elements and basically does &quot;if &apos;element&apos; is defined, execute file called &apos;element&apos;&quot;.
		That&apos;s all well and good, and there&apos;s absolutely zero reason to change it.
		But Minetest item names include colons.
		Windows filesystems don&apos;t allow that.
		In other words, Windows isn&apos;t compatible with the filenames I&apos;m using.
		I could hack in some stuff to remove the colons before treating the strings as filenames, but all I&apos;d be doing is mangling my code to account for the world&apos;s most-awful operating system.
		Quite frankly, I don&apos;t want to do that.
	</p>
	<p>
		If and when Minetest supports different textures based on <code>param2</code>, the <code>elemental</code> mod will be back on.
		And that mod has absolutely no use for filenames that Windows just happens to be incompatible with.
		Separate files aren&apos;t based on element names, but names of items within that mod, so the prefix and colon can easily be left off, not to mention that there&apos;s no need for looping anyway, so files of any arbitrary name can be included without adding even the slightest amount of complication to the code.
	</p>
	<p>
		The <code>modname_tba</code> mod will just be my personal mod though.
		If someone asks to see it, I&apos;ll release it on the forum, but with disclaimers about how it doesn&apos;t run on Windows, and how while you&apos;re welcome to recycle the code for other projects, pull requests modifying the Windows-incompatible part won&apos;t be accepted.
		I&apos;ll probably even include instructions for how to modify your own copy of the mod to run on Windows.
		The mod won&apos;t be considered a &quot;released mod&quot; though, and its thread won&apos;t be moved to the Mod Releases subforum.
	</p>
	<p>
		The first node I want to work on is the sapling-based node, used to renew materials through a new type of crafting.
		Looking through the list of materials I have to work with, everything&apos;s got to be built up from apples and logs.
		That&apos;s all I have to start with.
		The initial materials need to be renewable, so even in the most dried-up worlds, as long as you didn&apos;t do anything overly stupid, such as throw away all the saplings, there&apos;s a way to recover.
		There are only four renewable materials in Minetest Game 0.4.0 though: logs, apples, water, and lava.
		(Leaves and saplings aren&apos;t used as materials in the recipes of this mod.)
		Lava and water require buckets to obtain though, so they can&apos;t be used in recipes until after iron for making buckets has been renewed.
		Additionally, I don&apos;t want the renewal of any element to rely on the mining of a normally non-renewable element, so coal, iron, and sand all need to be crafted under the assumption that none of the three are obtainable.
		All three need to be built out of logs and apples.
	</p>
	<p>
		Coal will probably be built from one or two logs.
		I mean, I could throw in things made from logs into the recipe, such as signs, ladders, and chests, but there doesn&apos;t seem to be any sense in doing so.
		Iron is more rare and should be more expensive, so I might just straight up have it be craftable from nine apples.
		I don&apos;t know what to do about sand at the moment.
		I can&apos;t help but think of an old issue with slabs in the early versions of the game though.
		It used to be that three of a node could be crafted into three slabs.
		It was odd, seeing as the slabs were half-sized, so it was like half the material just disappeared.
		However, it was made into an actual problem by the fact that if you placed a slab atop another slab, the two merged into a full version of the node.
		So half your material did actually just vanish.
		Later, the slab recipe was fixed, so three full nodes were crafted into six slabs, meaning that when they combined back into full nodes, nothing was lost.
		Much, <strong>*much*</strong> later, the obnoxious slab-combining behaviour was removed.
		Seriously, if builders wanted to use the full version of the node, they wouldn&apos;t be crafting them into slabs and recombining them.
		They&apos;d just place the full version of the node.
		There was no good reason for slabs to combine when placed together.
		This material loss is similar to how crafting four sand together into sandstone then mining the sandstone produces a single sand node, making three sand nodes just vanish.
		Maybe crafting six wooden slabs together would be a good recipe for sandstone.
		Each pair of slabs causes a wood node to vanish, so three wood nodes vanishing could represent three sand nodes vanishing.
	</p>
	<p>
		The longer I thought about <code>modname_tba</code>, the less I liked its name.
		It&apos;d be hilarious on an actually-released mod, but is a waste of a good name for one not meant for release.
		Eventually, I settled on a new name.
		Normally, the mod&apos;s technical name is the same as the name used to reference it in speech in my mods, but this time, I&apos;m using a slight variation.
		The technical name will be <code>0</code>, so all nodes defined by the mod will begin with the <code>0:</code> prefix.
		However, I&apos;ll be referring to it as Zero.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="thoughts">
	<h2>Other thoughts for the day</h2>
	<p>
		The battery for the GT-i9100 still hasn&apos;t shown up in the mail.
		The <abbr title="individual retirement account">IRA</abbr> people wrote back though.
		They&apos;ve changed the name on the account to match my legal name instead of my birth name.
		Perfect.
		My next step with them will be trying to establish Web access to my account.
		That&apos;ll have to wait though.
		My term starts tomorrow, so I&apos;m going to have to go back to being drained all the time.
		Speaking of which, I guess these are my final thoughts before the censorship begins again and everything I write in my journal is behind that stupid take-down wall.
	</p>
	<p>
		I feel like I had three main tasks this break; or rather, three groups I needed to contact to get stuff done.
		I got two of those done just fine.
		The important one though, I failed to reach.
		Perhaps I should have pestered the vocal clinic every day, but I really don&apos;t see that as having worked until at least waiting the week they asked for the first time.
		I guess this term, my main goal needs to be to contact the vocal clinic repeatedly until I can actually get some sort of communication through.
		I can&apos;t move forward without this.
		I mean, I&apos;ve still got my face and my belly to work on, but I&apos;m making improvements on those, and I can&apos;t effectively speed either one up.
		Right now, getting the vocal lessons started is the biggest step I can take in the right direction.
	</p>
	<p>
		My neighbour says I&apos;m visibly thinner.
		That&apos;s good to hear.
		I&apos;ve noticed that when I grab my flab, it seems to be a bit smaller, but I wasn&apos;t sure if maybe I was imagining it.
		The neighbour actually thought I was getting taller at first though, because they misinterpreted my changing proportions, but figured out what was actually going on before they said anything to me.
		I haven&apos;t been doing as good as I should on my diet, but it seems I&apos;m actually making progress.
		And that&apos;s what matters.
		If I keep getting better, I won&apos;t have to stay fat forever.
		I don&apos;t feel weaker, either, so it should be fat I&apos;m losing, not muscle.
		I just have to keep trying, and I&apos;ll make it to a less-ugly body shape.
	</p>
</section>
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